Col Douglas Macgregor LIVE on the Daniel Davis Deep Dive - March 3, 2026
Col. Douglas Macgregor exposes the U.S.-Israel campaign against Iran as a strategic failure, dismissing decapitation strikes on Tehran’s leadership—including the Ayatollah—as ineffective, while Trump’s "unlimited ammunition" claims mask logistical collapse and depleted missile stocks. He reveals Israel’s true agenda behind the conflict, citing rejected Iranian NPT-compliant nuclear talks and framing U.S. support for Palestinian expulsion as a violation of international law. With oil prices surging 11% and global markets destabilized, Macgregor warns the war risks uniting Iran under a nationalist government, accelerating its nuclear ambitions while eroding America’s credibility—turning the Middle East into a "low-intensity Third World War" with no clear victory in sight. [Automatically generated summary]
War with Iran plows into day four, and the shots just keep coming.
Body blows really on both sides.
Here you see before you, this is this is almost not live, but it's a very, very current.
Just happened.
The international airport in Tehran is absolutely in flames.
It has been struck by the combined U.S. and Israeli side and causing significant damage.
There is also another body blow for Iran that just happened earlier this morning, just a couple of hours ago.
In the result of the Ayatollah being assassinated on the first day of this, they were meeting in the holy city of Qom in Iran to elect a new replacement Ayatollah.
They had an interim immediately placed in there, and they met with this council.
And I think it was the Guardian Council or something, something like that, but were they the guys who were basically meet to select?
Well, turns out that the Israeli intelligence got wind of it and they found out and they flattened the building.
So you can see that's where they were in right now.
We don't know anything about casualties.
We don't know if anybody survived.
If everybody died, it's unclear.
But this would be another major blow for the Iranian side and certainly going to continue to weaken the governing structures.
And I'm sure that's the exact intent on the American/slash Israeli side.
We're going to see what happens from that.
Iran is a very large country.
They have a big bureaucracy and a lot of components to its governing facilities and its structure.
But that can't help but be really hard.
If that's true, if the reports are true and that's what was in there, we'll wait and see what kind of an impact that has.
But there's also things going on on both sides of this.
But to try to figure out where this war is and most importantly, where it's headed, we have back with us today Colonel Douglas McGregor, Defense and Foreign Policy Analyst, former advisor to the Secretary of Defense, and always need to mention a highly decorated combat veteran who understands matters in the Middle East better than nearly anybody.
Doug, welcome back to the show, as always.
Hey, thanks very much.
Well, listen, let's just start right off the bat.
I mean, what do you think is the significance of at least the reports that council that was supposed to select a new Ayatollah?
So if the first one, where there was allegedly 40 military and other political leaders that got killed along with the Ayatollah, if this one's, according to reports, there were 88 members that were part of this council that could potentially have been killed.
What do you think the impact of that might be?
Well, to answer that, I think you have to ask the question: what happens when you fire a CEO of any large international corporation?
You pick a new CEO.
What happened when Field Marshal Rommel was fatally wounded in a car driving through the countryside of Normandy during the invasion of Normandy by U.S. and British forces?
He was replaced.
I think there's an obsession on the Israeli side with killing leaders.
And this passion for assassination has found a home now with the CIA and our president.
But I wouldn't expect much to come from it.
There's an assumption that Iran is some sort of backward tribal society where every time the tribal chief is killed, there has to be a new gathering.
And until that gathering occurs, nothing can happen.
And if you kill enough of the tribal leaders, the tribe will disintegrate.
I just don't see any evidence for that.
There's been no slackening in the fire from the Iranians since this war began.
They continue to hit targets all over the region with great effect, especially in Israel now.
And I don't see any evidence that that's going to stop.
So I think this obsession with killing senior leaders, whatever you can find, and particularly those people who are religious, is going to do them much good.
If anything, I think all of this galvanizes the population in its determination to resist submission to Israel.
Aegis-Class Destroyers: Missile Shortage?00:15:13
Because from the standpoint of the people on the ground in Iran, they know that we are simply doing what the Israelis want, that we are effectively the force that's being hired on by Israel to do its bidding.
They know the real enemy for them is Israel and that Israel wants to dominate them, wants to liquidate their country, wants to rule the entire region.
That's as simple as it is.
They're not going to submit to that.
Killing any number of mullahs isn't going to make any difference to the outcome for them.
And what do you think, Doug, about those elements that have for decades inside of Iran have been very unhappy with the Mullah leadership and the Ayatollah and the rules that they have?
And there have been periodically protests that had to be put down, et cetera.
And so there's definitely some constituencies within Iran that didn't want, that wanted to get rid of the Ayatollah.
What are the pros and cons, or maybe that's not the right word.
What is the prospect that these could result?
Those are stationary.
Those were aimed there for all countries.
So I think it was that we attacked first.
All right.
So yeah, let's see what the president said here.
Decimating them.
They're being decimated.
And if we didn't, if we didn't, and by the way, we have massive amounts of ammunition.
We have the high-end.
A lot of it was given away stupidly by Biden very stupidly for free.
And I'm all for Ukraine, but they gave away a lot.
As you know, when I give away ammunition, everybody pays for it.
The European Union's paying for it.
Then they can do what they want with it, but they are giving it, let's say, to Ukraine.
And it's okay.
But we gave away a lot of high-end, but we have plenty.
But we have unlimited middle and upper ammunition, which is really what we're using in this war.
And we have really an unlimited supply.
We also have a lot of the very high-end stored in different countries throughout the world with this.
We're literally storing it there, which is actually something that I insisted on in my first term.
I rebuilt the military in my first term.
The military is great.
A lot of unbelievable amount of ammunition or munitions, as they say, we given away to, you know, the Wall Street Journal incorrectly covered the story when they said that.
It was given away to the Middle East.
Not to the Middle East, it was given away to Ukraine.
Very little was given to the Middle East.
Middle East would buy a lot.
And some of the nations, because they're rich, they have a lot.
But it was given away to Ukraine.
And it just should have been done.
Look, it's a war that should have never happened.
If I were president, that war would have never happened.
But we have a tremendous amount of munitions, ammunition at the upper level, middle and upper level, all of which is really powerful.
Yeah, well, let's take a look at that because he's addressing there's two things that we were going to talk about.
One of them, we'll get to in a minute, but the second one, I'm glad he brought that up and great timing on that, Gary, is that there's this claim that, hey, we got to hurry up.
We only have a couple of weeks.
And I think you even mentioned you thought we had maybe a couple of weeks from like two or three weeks ago, that if we started this, we'd only have a couple of weeks at high intensity with these offensive, especially interceptor missiles.
And we would have to get a resolution or we'd be in trouble.
That's been reported in the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, the Washington Post, several people have been talking about that.
Apparently, General Kane, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, also warned about some of the risk if we go into.
But now then here, President Trump again live today, says, yeah, you know what?
Don't worry about that.
I got plenty of ammunition.
In fact, some categories are unlimited.
What do you make of that?
Always keep in mind that President Trump, whatever else he may claim to be, is a marketing genius.
He's someone who rose to prominence and became a billionaire because he's very good at marketing himself and whatever the product is that he's selling.
And that's what he's doing in the Oval Office right now.
Everyone I've talked to has said exactly what you just repeated.
There is no evidence for the limitless supply of high-end missiles that he's talking about.
But he can say it and he will say it because he's trying to sell a war.
He's trying to convince everyone that we are winning and that we are going to win, although he's never really defined very clearly what that means.
What we're implying from his remarks is that a win means the elimination of the Iranian government and its replacement with a puppet that Israel and the United States are comfortable with.
I don't see much evidence that that's going to happen.
And I don't see any evidence that his aspiration is going to be fulfilled.
He's also, within the last couple of days, said that he's interviewing candidates for leadership in Iran.
And some of them are, in his words, really good people.
And this is in anticipation of him installing these puppets once this war ends, which he is making it sound like it's imminent.
War is going to end.
Somebody else put something out last night on X.
And of course, you got to remember, X will put up with anything you put on it, who said Israeli, or excuse me, Iran is on the verge of capitulation.
This is all nonsense.
And this is all marketing.
And this is to boost support for something that a lot of people are asking questions about.
So no, it's just forget it.
Here's a little note for everybody.
I've been receiving information from on the other side in Department of the Navy and others that are saying our destroyers at sea, these are the Aegis-class destroyers, have fired remarkably small numbers of missiles.
In fact, very few have fired missiles at all.
Now, these are the standard missiles.
They're designed as part of the Aegis system to shoot down incoming ballistic missiles.
They also have strike missiles that they can fire to land on targets on land.
And they haven't fired any sea sparrows.
And I asked, well, this is very odd.
Why is that the case?
Because people are being told to guard their inventory carefully, to manage what they shoot, because we don't have inexhaustible supplies.
And remember, you've got to go back to port somewhere to reload.
Where do you go?
Well, we've lost all the ports in the region that we normally use, which means in the Med, you've got to go back to Europe.
Or in the Indian Ocean, we're talking about falling back on Indian ports where we can do it.
And the Indian ports are not really ideally designed for the purpose, but that's where we're talking about going.
So it's back to logistics.
The logistics is a nightmare.
And the logistics continues to plague us.
And I don't see any evidence at all that that's going to end.
You know, it's interesting.
He said there, his oft-repeated comment about, you know, here's the peace president.
The guys are going to end all these wars that the Ukraine-Russia war would never have started if he had been on elected back in the 2020 election.
But now here he is.
He has just chosen to start a war.
I mean, do you, it's probably a rhetorical question, but do you think he gets the juxtaposition of his own words that he just said this war wouldn't have started if he had been in office?
And now he is office and he has chosen to start this one.
Wherever Trump is is the center of the universe.
Whatever Trump does is an enormous success.
Whatever Trump says is brilliant.
That's the Trump brand.
That's marketing.
It has no connection to reality.
And his remarks have no connection to reality.
How many times do we have to listen to this man say, I rebuilt the American military in my first term?
Are you nuts?
That's absurd.
Nothing could be further from the truth.
You know, you try to tell people it takes 10 years to build a new army.
That is an army that's designed to fight in the future, not the past.
It takes 20 years or more to replace a fleet of ships.
It takes a long time to build ships.
It takes a long time to crew them and train them and put to sea.
It takes a long time to replace pilots when they retire.
That's why they ask pilots to come back in emergencies because we don't have enough.
This is all nonsense.
But most Americans don't know as much about the military as you and I do.
Most Americans have no one inside the military telling them anything.
You know, I've got one nephew in the army and another nephew in the Navy.
The naval officers are flying in the Mediterranean right now.
So, you know, we have some connection to reality.
We know what war means.
He has no idea what the word war means.
We're just at the beginning of a very long and desperate contest.
And the thing that he continues to ignore is: look, oh, that's a great cartoon.
That's perfect.
What he continues to ignore is that Iran's principal mission is to survive.
That's how they win.
They survive.
They do not disintegrate.
They do not fall apart.
They continue to resist.
What's the definition of winning for us?
Well, we have to be seen as having conquered the enemy, of having brought him to his knees.
Now, who is likely to succeed?
We, six, seven thousand miles away, are going to bring this country to its knees so that President Trump can arrive like Douglas MacArthur did in Tokyo at the end of World War II.
No, it's not going to happen.
It's fantasy.
Yeah, and that leads to part of the other problem here.
I mentioned at the outset: that the there was, first of all, there was, are we going to run out of missiles?
You've addressed that.
That still remains very much a concern, regardless of what he just said, the president did there.
But then there's also this issue of why we started.
Now, he came in as the peace president and all this, and he said that, you know, this war wouldn't have started without me.
But now he started one.
So now they got to justify why it is.
You said this was all about selling and marketing, and that's what is going on.
Well, there's another effort concurrent with this one as to why we launched.
Now, Secretary Rubio, and I'm going to show you this in a minute, kind of started a firestorm yesterday by inadvertently admitting that we weren't even going to go start this war, but that the Israelis were, and that we, quote, had to go and fight with them.
Otherwise, we'd have been hit anyway.
So he admitted that this was forced by the Israeli.
Well, that started a firestorm even among the MAGA supporters of the Trump, much less his political opponents.
And now that they seem to be going out of their way to try to say, no, no, no, that wasn't really the case.
We did this because of our national security.
So Steve Witkoff was on Fox News last night and tried to lay a bunch of platforms down, but they're kind of hollow.
I know you're shocked about that.
And I'm going to show you why some of them.
Here is the first one where he's claiming that actually we were forced into this by those bad negotiators from Iran.
They thought they could strong arm us.
You know, President Trump sent me and Jared there to really determine on his behalf whether they were serious about doing a deal that addressed his objectives, which are elimination of their missile program, elimination of their advocacy and support for proxies, which is destabilizing the entire Middle East,
elimination of their Navy so we can have freedom of the seas and not be threatened with the shutdown of the Gulf of Hormuz.
And finally, no nuclear enrichment that can get them to weapons grade, which means no nuclear bomb.
And we went in there and tried to make a fair deal with them.
And it was very, very clear that it was going to be impossible probably by the end of the second meeting.
But we then went back to the third meeting just to give it the last college try.
And of course, they thought they wanted us to report positivity.
It was not positive that meeting.
So look, to summarize, look, all we were asking, we're good guys here.
We're giving it that old college try.
All we're asking them is to get rid of their Navy, get rid of their missile forces, get rid of any kind of nuclear processing, and just completely lay down and do everything we ask.
And we gave them a fair deal.
Does such a fair deal even exist, Doug?
No, it's absurd.
In other words, surrender your sovereignty, turn over your country to Israel and whatever Israel wants to do with it.
In other words, unilaterally disarm so that not only do you not present a threat to Israel, but Israel can present a permanent threat to you and essentially determine the future of your country.
Let's go back to some data points.
Data point number one, Luke Groman, who's a very fine financial analyst.
I encourage people to listen to him.
He was on recently and he pointed out that every day, every 24-hour period in a day, the Chinese and their manufacturing base can produce 1,000 motors for cruise missiles.
We didn't say for all missiles.
We just said for cruise missiles, 1,000 a day.
We are hard pressed to produce 100 missiles a month.
Now, if you can produce a thousand rocket motors for cruise missiles every day, how many missiles can China produce?
And in addition to that, how many of these are already sitting underground in Iran waiting to be launched?
And how many more can be introduced into Iran to ensure that Iran continues to launch missiles?
I think it's pretty obvious.
So let's just keep that in mind.
This war is not going to end anytime soon.
Secondly, there was no deal on offer.
The whole business about ballistic missiles was dead on arrival.
The business about proxies was dead on arrival.
Everybody knew that from the beginning.
The one thing on which the Iranians were prepared to talk to us was, of course, the no enrichment of uranium.
They want to enrich a certain quantity to a certain percentage.
They were willing to negotiate that issue.
And I guess Witkoff and Kushner, as experienced real estate negotiators, conveyed the impression that they were actually interested in talking about that when they never were.
We know now that the decision, and this is something I've said for months, and people have not wanted to believe it.
I said it back in September.
I said it in August, July of last year.
This war is not over, and we will attack Iran.
It's only a matter of time.
Remember, you and I talked about that.
I thought it would happen before Christmas, probably November, December.
Credibility's Empty Facade00:04:26
Apparently, it wasn't ideal from a timing standpoint.
Then January came along and it looked like something was going to happen.
Well, we finally got the war.
Okay.
Now people are calling it the Purim war because of its coincidence with the Purim Festival in Israel.
Bottom line is this was always going to happen.
The negotiations were an empty facade.
Witkoff and Kushner report to Netanyahu.
That doesn't mean they don't keep Mr. Trump informed, but ultimately Mr. Trump is reporting to Mr. Netanyahu.
I mean, this is ridiculous.
The whole thing is theater.
And I don't think anybody should bother believing anything that Witkoff, Kushner, and anybody else in the White House inner circle says at this point.
And as you just demonstrated with President Trump, you might as well stop listening to anything he says because it's not rooted in facts.
It has no basis in reality.
Now, either President Trump knows that, and for the reasons I mentioned earlier, he says what he says, just as Witkoff says what he says.
He's trying to string along the American people and keep them on board, he thinks, for this war, or he's lost touch with reality.
I have the feeling he wants to string the American people along with this war.
Sorry, I got an issue with my camera.
I'll get that fixed in just a second.
But you talk about the negotiating issue and how it was just a facade.
Well, the Iranian side was apparently trying to seriously negotiate because you just heard how Witkoff characterized the negotiations that they tried, they gave it their last college try.
Well, here is the Omani foreign minister on CBS News the day before all this war started that said that they were willing to make some considerable concessions.
Will Iran negotiate about its ballistic missiles?
I believe Iran is open to discuss everything.
Including its ballistic missiles, because they've said this has to be nuclear arms.
Everything.
But that has to take its proper context, a proper course, a proper framework.
Now, the priority number one is to get this nuclear issue resolved.
So what does this do to our credibility as a nation?
And whether you're talking about something with Russia, something in the future, about China, anybody else, that we clearly don't have any kind of serious negotiations, even when the other side is willing to concede, it was just a front to just buy its time until we're ready to launch offensively.
Yes, it was always a lie.
And I think the Russians have learned this lesson the hard way.
I think the Chinese were probably a little more adroit and certainly more sensitive to reality.
I don't think they're fooled in any way, shape, or form by anything that comes out of Washington.
So to answer your question, I don't think we have credibility of any kind.
This didn't just begin with President Trump.
This started under Biden.
Some people would argue much earlier.
If you go back to the Minsk Accords and look at who was president at the time in 2014, 2015, 2016, we were dealing at the time with Obama and then Biden, and there were repeated lies told to the Russians.
The whole Minsk Accord thing was an empty vessel.
We lied to the Russians during, before, and after the start of the war in Ukraine.
So I think we have no credibility at all.
People are polite to us, and I think they tolerate us to some extent, largely because we have nuclear weapons and because people still are hoping against hope that someone will end up in the White House who actually represents the interests of the American people.
Because most people in the world who meet Americans and deal with them at all tend to have a positive picture of them and think that, yes, we could get along with the Americans.
The problem is their government, that is the American government, doesn't reflect the interests or the inclinations of the American people.
We all thought that that would change with President Trump.
We now know nothing has changed at all.
Oops, sorry about that.
Have a malfunction with my camera.
I got a little bit different one there.
Iranian Right to Reprocess Questioned00:14:29
So we got to back up.
So fortunately, we can keep going on here.
Moving back on back to the Witkoff situation with his comments to try and paint this picture of why we can actually, you know, succeed here and why this war was necessary.
Then he goes back to the nuclear thing.
So remember, first it was the nuclear thing.
Then it was actually the long-range missiles.
Actually, no, before it was those protesters, those Darwin protesters are being killed, and we have to go help them out.
Then it got back to the nuke again, and then it got back to the long-range missiles.
And then it's like, no, no, no, really, it's the nuclear thing.
That's what it's going to be.
So we're all over the map on that, even what we're claiming.
Well, Witkoff said he's trying to make the case now that, well, actually, all along, it really was the nuclear thing.
And in fact, during our negotiations, those darn negotiators had the audacity to have no shame to admit that they had reprocessed capacity, that they could make a bomb if they wanted to.
In that first meeting, both the Iranian negotiators said to us directly, with no shame, that they controlled 460 kilograms of 60%, and they're aware that that could make 11 nuclear bombs.
And that was the beginning of their negotiating stance.
So they were proud of it.
They were proud that they had evaded all sorts of oversight protocols to get to a place where they could deliver 11 nuclear bombs.
Okay, so that's what he apparently shocked that he learned just a few days ago.
But if he'd been watching the Daniel Davis deep dive in July of last year, we had Ted Postal say exactly that capability then.
How then do you get 10 nuclear bombs from 408 kilograms of 60% uranium?
Well, you start, all you need is 37.5 kilograms of uranium hexafluoride to convert to metal, divide 408 kilograms of uranium hexafluoride to get a number like 10 or 11.
That means you have enough uranium metal if you convert it for 10 nuclear bombs.
And so how long would it take from the decision?
Say they decided that they're going to do it.
How long would it take before the first one is produced?
The first bomb might take you 10 weeks because you want to manufacture the casing and the assembly system, although you may have done that already.
So now, as I interpret that, because this has been known.
In fact, Ted Postal told us last year, he said, you know, there's a risk that this is, of course, after Operation Midnight Hammer.
He said he wouldn't be surprised if they actually raced to a bomb because they would probably have the capacity to do so based on what they had already reprocessed or so.
Now, I'm guessing, what do you think?
That during these negotiations, that the Iranian side was trying desperately to say, look, if we wanted a bomb, we could already have one.
We have the stuff for it.
Were willing to negotiate that away.
They expressly said and Witcoff did not mention there.
They expressly mentioned that they would take all of that reprocessed material and get rid of it.
So it sounds like they were trying to say that, but you saw how it was characterized here.
What do you think?
Well, are you expecting a truthful interpretation from mr Witkoff?
His job is to bring on the war.
That's what he and Kusha were all about from the beginning.
They are acolytes of Netanyahu and Greater Israel.
And President Trump has demonstrated that he is a willing servant of Greater Israel, too.
So let's not kid ourselves.
The idea was to go to war.
They're going to say whatever they have to to justify that retrospectively at this point.
The truth is exactly what Ted Postel said.
And keep something in mind.
What Ted Postel explained, and by the way, he's a national treasure for what he does when he tells the truth about these things.
The truth is that the Japanese know this.
They could become a nuclear power virtually overnight.
There are any number of countries that if they wanted to be nuclear powers could become nuclear powers rather quickly.
Khomeini and his successor issued statements clearly, unambiguously, that they do not want nuclear weapons in the country.
They established the fatwa, the edict that said, we want nothing to do with them.
We will not allow them to be built.
They have been truthful on that point.
They haven't built any.
And for the last 30 years, we've listened to Mr. Netanyahu tell us they're two weeks from a bomb.
They're 10 days from a bomb.
Well, they're within range of a bomb, but they always made it clear they didn't want one.
Now, I think when this war is over, and I think it'll end badly for us and for Israel, Iran will survive.
This is a great civilizational state.
They're not going to go out of existence.
They'll get a different kind of government from the one that they've had.
And I think they're on their way to that.
They've been on their way to that for at least the last decade.
But that government is going to be a nationalist government.
The people there will be no less loyal to their country, no less confident in their country's future than the theocrats who have been ruling it since, oh, well, over the last 47 years.
So I just, you know, listening to this nonsense that somehow or another, if you kill enough bullahs, everything is going to change and improve is just ridiculous.
There's no evidence for it.
On the contrary, these bombings are causing large numbers of people to die.
They are destroying the lives of millions of people in Iran.
When this ends, those people are not going to stand up and say, oh, thank you, Mr. Trump.
Thank you, Mr. Netanyahu.
We're so grateful for the damage that you've done to us.
You liberated us.
Please come and help us build the future.
But all these people must be on hallucinogenics.
That's never going to happen.
In fact, I would say that the next government that comes to power will probably do everything in its power to very rapidly build nuclear weapons.
What we've done with the Israelis and at the behest of Israel is we've guaranteed the proliferation of nuclear weapons by demonstrating once again that if you want to be secure, if you want to live in a country that the United States and Israel can't threaten, a country they can't infiltrate, a country they cannot disrupt, and you probably ought to invest in nuclear weapons.
Yeah, that's one of the things that I've been concerned about for years is that the claim that we're trying to prevent them from having nuclear weapons and all the maximum pressure and all that crap that we've been doing is pushing them in that direction.
And it's been a shock that they haven't done it up to this point.
I think it's a great point that you make that the Ayatollah, for religious reasons, had a fatwa against it.
But with him out of the way, and if you take out the theocratic folks and you bring in a secular person, they may not have that prohibition.
They may come to the exact calculation that you did, and we may move down that road.
One other thing that I want to talk about from that Witkoff interview here, which I think really illustrates a separate problem that we have.
And I'd like you to look at this kind of beyond this current war that's going on.
And that is in our international credibility across the board, not just with negotiations.
In this comment here, Witkoff is going to demean the Iranian side for saying that they had the right to reprocess nuclear facility, reprocess nuclear capacity for power and research, which they have under the NPT, the non-proliferation treaty.
They signed and we signed.
Within that, they had the right to do it.
Watch what he says in the result of that.
Just to give you a little bit of a taste for how these three days of negotiations went, three separate times, Jared and I opened up with the Iranian negotiators telling us they had the inalienable right to enrich all their nuclear fuel that they possessed.
That's how they opened up.
We, of course, responded that the president feels we have the inalienable right to stop you, dead in your tracks.
They then went on to say that beyond the inalienable right to enrich, that that was going to be their starting point.
And Jared and I just sort of looked at ourselves flummoxed and said, well, we're really in for it now.
Yeah, there he's admitted, yeah, that the war is on there.
But on the NPT treaty that we signed and ratified, they do have that right.
And he just said, no, you don't because we say you don't.
And we have the right to attack you, which we don't.
This sets us up to me as being someone who acknowledges no international treaties, whether it's an executive order, whether it's a senate-passed treaty.
We are going to do whatever we want and we'll deny you no matter what treaties you have signed.
What danger does that have for us going forward?
Well, the Israeli state has demonstrated that it has the inalienable right to kill or expel millions of Palestinians from their home, their homes in Gaza and presumably also in the West Bank.
That's their sovereign right to execute that.
Now, I suppose they do, but they're only doing it because we support an assistant in that process.
So, you know, it works both ways.
First of all, you're 100% right about the NPT, the Nonproliferation Treaty.
That's very clear.
They do have the right to enrich uranium.
And there are limits, and they've respected those, contrary to what the Israelis and their agents in the United States continue to insist.
But I think it's far more serious to say that there is at least international prohibition against the mass expulsion and killing of people even inside the borders of your own country.
Now, I think Israel has ignored that.
And again, they've been able to do so because of us.
If you took away our support, if you took away the inexhaustible quantity of weapons and weapons systems and munitions that we provide to the Israelis and the cover that they receive from us, I doubt seriously that they would be able to do it.
But they have.
So I think perhaps Mr. Witkoff should be asked whether or not he thinks the Israelis have the right to do that, because I'm absolutely certain that he and Mr. Kusher and virtually everybody else in the inner circle of the president of the United States is totally convinced that they have the right to expel or kill the Palestinians who happen to be within the boundaries of the Israeli state.
You can ask him, I think he'll probably admit to it, but he may not say it that clearly.
So it's just this whole discussion is tragic.
This whole discussion is pointless.
And I don't know what you can do about it.
I mean, we can sit around and talk about it, but no one is willing to stand up and take a position.
And in the United States, people have been propagandized for 30 years at least.
Some would say 40 plus, to believe that anything the Iranian government says is a lie, who believe that the Iranians are bent on conquering the region.
There's no evidence for any of that, that the Iranians can't wait to get a nuclear weapon.
And by the way, if those Iranians get that nuclear weapon, they're going to use it against us here in the United States.
There's no evidence for that at all.
No, it's not.
And there is a consequence to this.
Gary's showing you right now.
This is an image from Tel Aviv.
I showed you at the top of this that the international airport in Tehran was under fire, that they are getting pummeled up there, that there was about a building where their leaders were had been hit.
This is Tel Aviv.
He was showing you just a minute ago Jerusalem.
So there are some real consequences to this right now for all sides.
I mean, we're also taking hits in Bahrain, especially.
Some of our troops have already been killed.
Who knows what else may have happened so far?
A lot of there's a news blackout on that.
But these things are a constant.
This is day four.
And there is no evidence that the Iranian side is anywhere near exhausted in their missile supplies or their political will to continue fighting.
So we can imagine there's going to continue to be some of these.
Now, one other person who is engaged in this whole process of trying to justify the war is Benjamin Netanyahu.
Now, in this piece, I'm going to show you here.
Pay careful attention.
This is not just that he said we had to launch it now for the reasons that Witkoff was trying to claim.
But Netanyahu claims that this was actually Trump's idea from back even before he got inaugurated.
They absolutely are clinging to their ability to build out a nuclear weapons program.
And the president, as he said, he wanted a peace deal, gave them every opportunity for peace like they did before Operation Midnight Hammer.
And they steadfastly refused.
And before he was inaugurated the second time.
And we met in Mar-a-Lago.
And the first thing that Donald Trump said to me, he said, you know, we have to prevent Iran from getting nukes.
As simple as that.
He said that because he saw that as a clear and present danger to the security and well-being of the United States.
To have a regime like that so fanatic that it just defines itself by destroying America, exporting revolution, exporting terrorism, exporting the worst Islamist fanaticism that attacks Arabs, attacks Israelis, attacks Americans, attacks everyone, everyone inside.
Now, I'm telling you, it pains me to actually make this statement or ask this rhetorical question.
But when you're talking about who is the, what was the phrase he used, this fanatic regime, and who is it that wants death and destruction since, let's say in the last, I don't know, I'm just going to pick a number out of thin air.
The last 14 months, which two nations on earth have attacked more countries than any other two countries on earth?
Losing Our Global Position00:08:18
And spoiler alert, it's not Iran.
Well, it sounds like a trick question, you know, and I don't answer trick questions.
I'm sorry.
Now, look, we know that we and the Israelis have been engaged in constantly disrupting and meddling in other people's business, particularly in the Israeli case and the affairs of their neighbors.
And they justify that on all sorts of grounds.
Here's what's really important.
Whenever Mr. Netanyahu speaks, whenever his agents in the United States speak, whenever the mainstream media speaks, They are hard-pressed to convince everyone in the United States that nothing has changed in Iran in 47 years.
And if you insist that things actually have changed, and Iran today is very different from what it was 10 years ago, 20 years ago, let alone 47 years ago, they say, well, it's not enough.
It's not a real democracy.
There are a lot of people in the United States who have real questions about this thing called real democracy, when we let people vote who are not citizens, when we don't exercise any controls whatsoever over election integrity, when we don't seem to value American citizenship.
You know, it's hard to listen to this sort of nonsense.
We should be much more concerned about what's happening in this country.
And we need to understand something.
We should have learned this.
I think we actually have more than we realize.
If you're not intervening in someone else's country and you're not provoking them and you're not threatening them, the probability of anyone in the world using a nuclear weapon against us is about zero because they know there's nothing to be gained by it.
And secondly, they know if they try to do something like that, they'll end up as a burned out cinder on the highway.
We will respond dramatically and decisively.
This is crazy.
You know, it's why Stalin, who was probably one of the world's greatest criminals, certainly murdered far more people than Hitler ever did.
And Stalin said, you know, nuclear weapons are political weapons.
They have no military utility.
They destroy everything.
So there is no purpose in fighting a war that can only be won with a nuclear weapon.
So nuclear weapons are useful for political purpose.
It guarantees your territorial integrity, and you can threaten people that don't have nuclear weapons.
Stalin was right.
And that's what we're doing.
We have two nuclear states, Israel and the United States, and we're threatening another state that doesn't have any nuclear weapons.
The whole thing is the theater of the absurd.
You know, these spokesmen have turned the world upside down.
And they are insisting that Israel and Jews worldwide will never be safe until Iran is expunged.
And by the way, after we finished expunging Iran for them, they'll undoubtedly want us to do the same to Turks or to the Turkey.
And then I expect they'll turn us on Pakistan.
Now, to be fair, Pakistan has been the incubator of Islamist terrorism in these madrasas, schools that have been funded lavishly by the Saudis.
But I'm not sure I'd declare war on Pakistan as a result.
You know, this business of we declare war on people that we don't need to, who have not necessarily harmed us directly.
It's back to Stalin again.
You know, his theory of government was kill the citizen before the citizen has a chance to commit a crime against the state.
It was prophylactic justice.
So you herd millions of people into camps and kill them.
This is insane.
And that's essentially the road that Israel's on.
You know, let's kill all of these people, destroy all of these people because they harbor hatred for us or they're opposed to us or they're anti-Semitic or something else.
This all needs to stop.
And we need someone at the helm in the United States who's more balanced and has some sense of understanding of the rest of the world that we live in beyond our borders.
And is a stooge for this kind of propaganda.
Let me ask you some of the consequences to going down this absurd path that you just described so eloquently.
And that let's take a look at a couple of different factors.
First of all, let's take a look at the region.
One of the things that has always been one of our strengths is that we have been viewed, especially in the Middle East, by a lot of these regimes, Saudi Arabia, UAE, Qatar, et cetera, that we are the power.
We are the global superpower that can bring stability to the Middle East.
It's certainly for them and that they can feel safe with us.
But now then, because we have chosen to go to this war alongside of Israel, that prompted them to get hit.
So now then they have, you know, whether you're talking about Bahrain, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, I mean, all these countries have been hit and continue to be hit.
UAE also, they've gotten a lot of shots so far.
So we have proven that being our friend does not make them immune.
They have been hit and our physical capacity to defend them with our air defense has shown to be grossly inadequate.
What does this do once this is over?
Because right now everybody's focused on the near term getting the war over.
But after this is over, will this cause a recalibration among the leaders of these regions that they, how closely do they want to tie themselves to it?
I predict that at the end of this process of this war, we will be effectively swept out of the region.
We will be gone.
We will lose any footing that we had in the Middle East and probably in most of the Muslim world.
And it won't stop there.
If you're sitting in Korea right now and you look at the way things are developing, you ask yourself, well, why do we have these Americans inside our country?
We've kept them here or they've stayed here for 70 years, ostensibly for the purpose of protecting us, but there's no evidence that they can protect anybody in the Gulf or anywhere else in the region from Iran.
So why would they be able to protect us from North Korea and China for that matter, since we insist that we're really there to deter China?
But the Koreans know the Chinese have no interest in war.
And they're doing a land office business with South Korea.
The Chinese would be very happy if South Korea ultimately absorbed North Korea and then developed Korea in the North to the extent that the South is being developed.
And then they would have a tremendous trading partner.
Nobody in Northeast Asia is interested in a war with anybody.
The Japanese, the Koreans, the Chinese, absolutely off the table.
They don't want anything to do with it.
So I think right now in Korea, and I would argue also in Japan behind closed doors, people are saying, gee, how do we get rid of these Americans?
They're a liability.
They're not an asset, not just in the Middle East, but also there.
We're fighting against these things.
We think that by bullying and threatening and destroying, that somehow or another we're winning.
We're losing.
This is not something to win.
We're losing our position in the world.
We're losing strategically.
It's not doing us any good at all.
And President Trump can say whatever he likes from the Oval Office.
It's not going to change this.
And I think Americans, unfortunately, don't understand it.
And as these things develop in the aftermath of this catastrophe, we're going to see exactly what I described.
The rest of the world is going to say, you know, very politely, we really think you ought to leave.
Yeah.
And so one last comment.
This is very important for your audience.
In 1919, at the end of the Versailles Conference, a delegation from Syria, remember, Syria was this newly formed state that was then supposed to be a protectorate under the French, right?
And the delegation from Syria approached us and then ultimately approached the great powers, Wilson, Clevin Saud, Lloyd George, and said, would the United States be willing to come and be in charge of our protectorate?
We have confidence in the Americans.
They will help us build an effective democratic state.
Current Problems in the Persian Gulf00:05:51
Think about that.
That was 1919.
Can you imagine anyone, anyone in the Islamic world today, or for that matter, almost anywhere else in the global south, showing up in Washington and saying, would you consider coming and helping us build this society and build an effective liberal democratic state?
I don't think so.
Yeah, then that's the only that's still that those are some of the medium and longer term problems.
But let's look at the current problems here.
With the Strait of Hormuz being effectively blocked so far, it hadn't been totally blocked, not hard, but it's got a soft block on it right now.
We don't know how long that's going to last, but it's already starting to cause some problems here.
And how I'd like you to talk a little bit about the potential economic problems that this work could cause for the United States if this goes on.
And here's just a couple of indicators.
This is as of just an hour or so ago.
The price of oil has continued to now creep up.
It's gone up 11% since the war began.
It's not a huge, you know, it's not exactly up to $100, $150 a barrel, but it's creeping up there because people are getting more nervous.
Also, the Dow is down.
I think earlier today, anyway, it was down by 900 points as people are starting to get markets are getting nervous at where this is going.
And that's just where it is right now.
Because you talk about Fox News and really most of the media I've seen out there, they're almost on victory laps already and popping champagne corks and everything else, saying that they're winning here.
But if this starts going like physically, you can't hide it anymore.
It starts going south.
What concerns are you about the economic impact to the West?
Well, let's stop and understand that you can't separate the financial economic impact from the larger strategic impact on the United States too.
Japan buys 72% of its oil from the Persian Gulf region.
In other words, 72% of Japan's oil comes from the Persian Gulf.
65% of South Korea's oil comes from the Persian Gulf.
50% of India's oil is from the Persian Gulf.
50% of China's oil is from the Persian Gulf.
Now, Europe only depends for 18% of its oil from the Gulf.
And of course, we, 2%.
Now, what is the United States done by unilaterally, not unilaterally, but certainly at the behest of Israel, done by taking on Iran and essentially making it inevitable that the Gulf traffic would be shut down?
Well, what have we done to our supposed friends and allies?
What about Japan?
What about South Korea?
India is not an enemy.
It's a neutral state, but it's not an enemy.
So those are three states that are the cornerstone of the global economy, and we've both sent them into a tailspin.
You know, this is going to cost people in those countries horrendous amounts of money.
Are they going to be grateful to us for the war that we started and how it ends?
I don't think so.
And of course, foolish people are saying, well, we've just taken China off the board.
Now they're going to suffer.
And that's part of the benefit of going to war with Iran.
Well, I don't think so.
First of all, the Chinese have already turned to the Russians, as have the Indians, as have the South Koreans and the Japanese.
And the Russians are doing everything in their power to make up for these shortages.
By the way, this is a landslide in terms of wealth and power for the Russians.
And I think we were interested for some time in somehow or another punishing the Russians for doing what they've done in Ukraine.
Well, this certainly isn't the way to that.
I don't think anybody in this administration has sat down and carefully scrutinized the consequences of any of their actions.
This started with the tariffs.
We tariffed everybody.
We've never recovered.
Now we're doing this not just to Iran.
We're not simply harming Iran.
We're harming the substantial backbone of the world economy and people that are supposedly our friends and allies.
None of this makes any sense.
Now, where's this going?
We're going to be north of $100 a barrel, I suspect.
It's inevitable.
I don't see how we avoid it.
And that's understandable because the various insurance firms have already told the tankers, if you go through the straits, we can't insure you.
There's no certainty you're going to be able to get through.
Thus far, the Iranians have let Chinese tankers through.
So I suppose the next step in this is for President Trump to announce that we're going to halt and board Chinese tankers headed to China with oil.
We'll see what happens at that point.
In other words, how far do you push this, Dan, until you really get the Third World War?
Right now, we are in kind of a run-up to the Third World War.
I would call it a low-intensity Third World War.
But if we push this envelope much further, we'll get the Third World War and we'll regret the hell out of starting it.
Do you think, or better question, how hard would it be for Iran to keep that?
That headline that Gary put up there is just kind of justifies and validates what you were just saying there, that Iran's strategy is to expand the war, increase the cost, and then outlast Trump, whether that's with missiles or anything else.
Do you think that Iran can outlast us?
And meaning that those strikes and those body blows that we talked about at the top of the show are real and continuing on.
Can they sustain those shots and spread this out that long?
Well, I think body blows have been delivered to all sides.
I think that we're finished in the region now.
Bases Destroyed, Not Rebuilt00:05:10
These bases are all destroyed.
They're not going to be rebuilt.
We're not going to be invited back.
I don't know that the Emirates and Saudi Arabia will have the same governments they had today in the future.
And the populations in those countries are not blaming Iran for this.
They're blaming us.
We're the problem.
That's the way it's being viewed by the people that live in the region.
And the people eventually are going to count.
Thus far, the ruling elites in the peninsula have been able to ignore the populations.
I don't think that's going to be the case anymore.
Now, I don't know that bombing Tehran's airport is a body blow.
I think that's unfortunate.
But when you see these kinds of things happen, especially when a place like that doesn't necessarily have much military utility, since all the aircraft there are commercial, unless you think you want to destroy the radars, in which case you don't have to destroy the whole airport.
But I think what we're beginning to see is frustration on the part of the airmen.
Remember, the Air Force has targeteers.
They normally have six levels, and they study all the potential targets very carefully.
And they get guidance that they have to have military utility.
And they usually discover that they run out of so-called useful military targets pretty quick.
Either they run out of them or they attack them, but without effect.
And so then the decision is, well, if we can't affect these targets that we thought were important, let's bomb the airport.
Let's bomb the universities.
Let's bomb the destalinization plants, on and on and on.
That's what I saw happen during the Kosovo air war.
The inability to make the air campaign work led to massive destruction all over Serbia, far beyond Kosovo and far beyond anything that was military.
I think we're going to see some of that now.
And it's interesting that it's already begun this early, you know, especially when you look at the murder or destruction of these 150-plus girls at the school in Iran, although perhaps that was intentional.
I have no idea.
But it certainly wasn't intentional if we did it, because I know that we avoid those things as much as possible.
So, you know, the bottom line is you're going to get to this point where everything is going to become fair game.
And that happens because people are frustrated.
It's not working.
Now, there's one thing we didn't mention that is already being worked on very seriously, and that is that we're trying, along with the Mossad, and of course the CIA is right in there, trying to organize the Kurds that are in Syria and in northern Iraq to persuade them, the MEK and others, to join together in a joint invasion on the ground of northern Iran.
Now, this is a very dangerous thing because if there's one thing that the Iranians and the Turks can agree on 100%, is that they don't particularly care to have an Israeli puppet state called Kurdistan set up at the expense of their specific countries.
So at this point in time, I think that's very dangerous development.
And it's the kind of thing that is going to drive the Turks and the Iranians together.
Now, that's not to say that the Turks are not already concerned about Iran, because they know that if they stand around and watch while Iran is destroyed, and if it is destroyed, and it does descend into chaos, they think that they're next on the menu.
And they're probably right because we've talked about that.
We had Naftali Bennett and then eventually Netanyahu both say Turkey is at least as dangerous, maybe even more dangerous to Israel than Iran.
So if you look at this, what's going on, why would they be trying to put together a ground invasion?
Well, I think it's very obvious because we can't do it.
We can't move those troops.
And today is very different from the world that you and I were in in 1990.
Today, if we tried to land large numbers of troops at a place like al-Jabael on the Saudi coast, that would be targeted and utterly destroyed.
And if they're smart, they would wait until we're just disembarking and pulling off equipment.
Don't destroy the place.
Let us show up.
Then you get two for one.
You destroy the troops and you destroy al-Jabail.
And we've seen that our Patriot batteries, however good they may claim to be, and they may be very good, cannot defend these places from Iranian missiles.
So the idea is, well, we can't send anybody over there.
They'll never come ashore.
They'll be destroyed.
So what do we do?
Well, let's go back to the Kurds because the Kurds want their own state.
That means part of Turkey, part of Iran.
Promise the Kurds that you'll give them their state if they join you in trying to bring down Iran.
And if this materializes, as I think they're trying to make it materialize, I don't think the Turks will just sit on the sidelines and walk.
Yeah, I don't think though.
But there's also, there's not enough of them.
So I think that that's just a desperate thing that's just not going to happen.
Kurdish State Promise00:00:25
I'm sorry, I'm going to have to cut it short right there because I have to actually jump on another TV show here.
But I'm really, really grateful to have you on the Doug.
You've made so many great points today.
Really, really thank you for coming on.
Sure.
Okay.
Bye-bye.
And we will see you later on today on the Daniel Davis Deep Dive with Patrick Kenningson, who's got some other great insights from his reporting on the ground previously in Iran.